Donald Trump appeared at the CIA on Saturday, supposedly to reassure the intelligence community that he supported their work. But instead, Trump had other issues to discuss. Standing in front of the CIA’s memorial wall of agents who died in the line of service to the nation, Trump let fly, telling the CIA know who America’s real enemy is.
“I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. They made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. ... exactly the opposite."
Apparently Trump's Twitter account is part of the dishonest media. But after telling the story of how the rain miraculously stopped when he was delivering his speech on Friday, he had an example of the media’s dishonesty—the size of his inauguration crowd.
"We had something like a million and a half people. It went all the way back to the Washington Monument. Then i turn on the media and they say we had 250,000 people. That's not bad. But it's a lie. ... We caught them. We caught them in a lie, and it was a beauty."
It was clear that Donald Trump was going to lie about this, but the scale of the lie is staggering, even for Trump. Even more staggering? That he would tell this monster whopper right to the face of people whose job it is to do information analysis.
About two hundred CIA officials volunteered to come in on their day off to watch Trump speak. Appearing in front of the memorial wall, it might have been expected that Trump would deliver a speech on the history of the agency, or its importance to the nation. Instead, Trump bragged about Mike Pompeo, the miracle of his dry speech and his massive crowds.
In a rambling, ten minute address, Trump bragged about the number of speeches he could make in a day, and the size of his campaign crowds. He then repeatedly confused the CIA with the military, talked about what a high percentage of military votes he got, and stopped just short of demanding an oath of loyalty.
"I'll bet almost everyone in this room voted for me ... But I'm not going to make you raise your hands. We’re on the same wavelength."
Trump blamed the idea that he had said anything against the CIA on the “dishonest press,” ignoring his own multiple statements, tweets, and interviews.
In declaring that the press had lied about the size of his inauguration crowd, he said they kept showing a picture of “an empty field” rather than his real crowd, and that there were 250,000 just in the area around the Capitol.
CIA analysts may have been shocked at Trump’s blatant lies on the crowd size, but they were likely terrified by his statements on Iraq. Revisiting his proposed war crime, Trump repeatedly said that “we should have kept the oil” in Iraq. Even more frightening, he suggested:
"Maybe we'll have another chance."